The National Commission for Colleges of Education said it would begin to clamp down on existing illegal colleges of education across the country.
The Executive Secretary of the Commission, Prof. Paulinus Okwelle, made this disclosure in Abuja, during the National Summit themed, ”Nigeria Certificate in Education: The Way Forward”.
According to Okwelle, despite adequate human and material resources, the decreasing turnout of students was contributory to the low capacity delivery experienced in the colleges of education.
“In the course of carrying out our regulatory and monitoring functions, we encounter challenges of the proliferation of illegal colleges of education and study centres around the country.This problem was discussed at the last meeting of the National Council on Education in Jalingo sequel to which we embarked on a special verification exercise,” Okwelle stated.
He explained further that the exercise was to pinpoint and ultimately shut down extant illegal colleges and the NCE study centres in the country.
“At the end of the exercise, we discovered the existence of some illegal institutions and study centres spread across the country.The reports have been harmonised and will soon be forwarded to the Minister of Education for consideration and further directive,” he affirmed.
The executive secretary expressed commitment toward regulating and holistically revamping the Nigeria Certificate in Education programmes, stressing the need for quality education, which, in all ramifications, was nothing to sneeze at.
According to Okwelle, the commission had recorded milestone achievements via accreditation programmes, resource visitation, including monitoring and inspecting programmes, integral to the overall quality of performance and development of the colleges of education.
“Periodically, we have been keeping close monitoring on the aforesaid institutions as a device to entrench standard and control or even upgrade the quality through accreditation.A total of 22 Colleges of Education have been accredited. Many other colleges have been scheduled for the exercise before the end of this year.We are in the process of reviewing our accreditation instrument to meet global trends, especially with the demand of the digital society,” Okwelle assured.